Abstract
Prior research suggests that interviewers play an important role in representing their organization and in making the interview a pleasant experience for applicants. This study examined whether impression management used by interviewers (organization-enhancement and applicant-enhancement) is perceived by applicants, and how it influences applicants' attitudes, intentions, and emotions. Adopting a signaling perspective, this article argues that applicants' positive attitudes and intentions toward the organization increase if interviewers not only enhance the organization, but if the signals they sent (i.e., organization-enhancement) are actually received by the applicant. Similarly, applicants' positive emotions should increase if interviewers not only enhance the applicant, but if the signals they send (i.e., applicant-enhancement) are actually received by the applicant. A field study that involved video coding interviewers' impression management behavior during 153 selection interviews and pre- and post-interview applicant surveys showed that the signals sent by interviewers during the interview were received by applicants. In addition, applicants rated the organization's prestige and their own positive affect after the interview more positively when they perceived higher levels of organization-enhancement during the interview. Furthermore, applicants reported more positive affect and interview self-efficacy after the interview when they perceived higher levels of interviewer applicant-enhancement. We also found an indirect effect of interviewers' organization-enhancement on organizational prestige through applicants' perceptions of organization-enhancement as well as indirect effects of interviewers' applicant-enhancement on applicants' positive affect and interview self-efficacy through applicants' perceptions of applicant-enhancement. Our findings contribute to an integrated understanding of the effects of interviewer impression management and point out both risks and chances in selling and smooth-talking toward applicants.
Highlights
Over the last three decades, interviewers have gained a lot of research attention because of the important role they play in attracting applicants and in ensuring organizations’ success
The aim of our study was to examine how interviewer impression management (IM) influences recruiting outcomes by incorporating applicants’ perceptions of interviewer IM: Are the signals that interviewers send received by applicants, and how do applicants react to the signals they receive? It is striking that past research has rarely addressed whether applicants are responsive at all to interviewers’ use of IM, as prior studies have not differentiated between the signals that are sent and the signals that are received
We develop and test a signaling timeline model of interviewer impression management and argue that for interviewer IM to be an effective means for recruitment, the signals sent need to be perceived by applicants, and applicants need to react to the signals they receive
Summary
Over the last three decades, interviewers have gained a lot of research attention because of the important role they play in attracting applicants and in ensuring organizations’ success. Research on interviewer impression management (IM)—defined as interviewers’ attempts to influence the images applicants gain during social interactions (Schlenker, 1980)—suggests that the signals interviewers send to applicants have the potential to improve the effectiveness of recruitment activities (Stevens et al, 1990; Tsai and Huang, 2014; Wilhelmy et al, 2016). Despite this initial proposition, we are still unclear about the mechanism by which the signals that are sent in terms of interviewer IM influence recruiting outcomes. Past research has neglected the notion that applicants may already enter the interview with different attitudes, intentions, and emotions, and that these initial differences need to be considered in order to capture the influence of interviewer IM
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